In memoriam, Boobie, June 18, 1991-July 21, 2005, lovingly remembered and terribly missed on the anniversary of his death

It was hard to believe:
holding you that last day,
the breath gone from you,
everything about you still.
I knew it was coming;
the decision was mine to make.
By my nod, you went quietly, painlessly finally.
After fourteen years, you were no longer of this world.
I held you for the last time, and wept the loss...
as I do still,
as I stop to remember,
always to remember,
the good years, the wonderful years when I had you,
consigned to memory now,
in a world so suddenly different,
so suddenly changed,
so suddenly cold.

Are we just cockroaches, Part 2

Every once in a while, when I feel overwhelmed by everything, thinking of lives that I have lost and dreams that have died and things that will never be, I come to realize just how insignificant I actually am, how little and meaningless and insignificant my grief, my concerns, and my aspirations are in a world which has seen countless lives lost over billions of years.

From the thousands of deaths in the recent China earthquake to the hundreds who met their watery deaths at sea with the ill-fated Princess of the Stars, lives have come and gone with barely a whisper in the immeasurable expanse of time. Why should we then think of ourselves as so important, so special just because we can think and create and remember?

This sense of self-importance, a major feature of the Christian religion that proclaims man to have been made in the image of God, should bring honest men and women to ask: What, if anything at all, makes us so important?

Honest people, looking into themselves, at the history of the planet, and at the whole range of possibilities in the universe, should come to the same painful conclusion: NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL. Nothing differentiates us from the pigs that become our (your) meat or the dead cockroach that we throw unceremoniously into the wastebasket. In the end, it seems, we are here simply to live out our days and die, just like every kind of life that we know of.

Which makes the the promise of an afterlife more appealling, perhaps even necessary if we are indeed to lead good lives.

But what if there is no afterlife? As asked before, why should we be entitled to an afterlife when we refuse to accord such a possibility to creatures that are more beautiful and innocent and kind than we are or could ever be?

Perhaps we deserve no afterlife.

But if there is no afterlife, what consolation is there? Are we just cockroaches that crawl, are stepped on, then die?

Think about it this way: either way, afterlife or not, death should be a boon. If, after this existence, we do meet the loved ones who had gone before us, then well and good. If, however, all is nothingness come death, maybe just as well. If we are indeed just cockroaches, then death should be a blessing. The very thought that it would all be over should be consolation enough. After all, with the peace of nothingness, who needs the burden of consciousness?

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